Yes, America’s got a new kind of fantasy football league. Oh what the hell, it’s just gambling anyway, no different than Wall Street’s high-frequency traders betting on stocks and derivatives. So place your bets guys, it’s just money, just a fantasy, right?

Seriously, go wild with your fantasies. Pit the entire National Football League’s best against the fate of seven billion, the entire human civilization, the future of Planet Earth.

Yes that’s just what environmental editor Ari Phillips did over on Fusion.net. He may be the new “Nick the Greek” of the Vegas gaming industry, the new league for the heavy hitters.

So what are the odds? Are America’s gamblers stacking the deck, picking the NFL as the odds-on favorite, not just more popular, but the likely winner in a new high-stakes fantasy football league?

Does the planet, do seven billion humans, our entire civilization, the survival of the planet have a fighting chance against the NFL’s powerhouse dominance of prime-time media? Stay tuned, we’ll expose the real odds:

Today the Vegas betting line makes the NFL a huge point spread. Here’s how Fusion’s editor put it: “This year is an especially prominent one for both football and climate change.” Wearing black uniforms, the NFL won an early toss will be defending the north goal:

Momentum is theirs going into the game. Why? “The National Football League will host the 50th incarnation of what has become one of the world’s most popular televised events, the Super Bowl, in February. Super Bowl XLIX on February 2nd, 2015, was the most watched broadcast in U.S. TV history. Super Bowl 50, no doubt, aspires to be even more super.”

Yes, right out of the gate the NFL appears to have a commanding edge, the peoples’ favorite of All-Americans. But never give up hope, all you environmental fans, keep cheering. Remember, you got Pope Francis and his divine magic coming up on the outside, burning up the field, as we saw with the millions and millions on the tour stadiums in Washington, New York City, Philadelphia.

Defending the opposite goal in this battle-of-the-century is Pope Francis’ favorite, the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change team, known worldwide as COP-21, defending the south goal, wearing white uniforms.

Pope’s favorite, climate change is underdog with a huge handicap

And here’s the hotline on the Pope Francis favorite, the UN-IPCC Team, Fusion.net’s scratch sheet: “As for climate change, global leaders from around the world will meet in Paris at the beginning of December for COP21, a long-anticipated climate-change summit. During these 12 days (and likely one or two extra crisis-aversion days) thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries will attempt to produce a landmark deal to stem global warming and avoid the worst impacts to be felt above a 2°C temperature rise.”

OK, we already know the NFL has the edge in the Vegas betting line, thanks mainly to the upcoming Super Bowl 50 in February 2016, as the final rounds of the U.S. presidential race kick off. Meanwhile, Fusion accurately reports the Pope-UN’s handicap as “key players in the climate debate are hustling from city to city and country to country to try and align all parties and avoid a disappointing, and possibly disastrous, failure come December.”

Yes, they’re sweating it. The impression gamblers are getting, that the UN’s Climate Team is in disarray, losing it. Likely reflecting hard data leaking from organizations like InsideClimateNews where one headline says it all: “New Study Says Even 2 Degrees of Warming Highly Dangerous.” Planet Earth will overheat and self-destruct no matter how hard Team UN-COP21 fights.

Here’s how Fusion analyzed the risk: “Such a failure could set back coordinated global action for years: A period of time many climate scientists don’t think is available to curtail fossil-fuel use, limit greenhouse-gas emissions, and avoid catastrophic damage in the form of sea level rise, drought, heat waves, and the many corresponding impacts, such as worldwide food shortages.”

Macho NFL odds-on favorite to beat Vatican’s favorite underdog

That’s the battle: Macho-America’s NFL team backed by Prime-Time Media with over $7 billion in annual revenues on the line. Versus Pope Francis’s favorite, the UN-IPCC’s team of seven billion faithful fans and roughly 200 nations fighting to save Planet Earth, fighting to save the human race, struggling to save our global civilization from the “catastrophic ending” famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking sees dead ahead for our only planet, if we lose this not-so-fantasy contest.

Here’s Fusion editor Ari Phillips wrap-up of the betting odds, a fascinating online Google search comparison of the two teams. The bottom line: “What do these charts show? They show that Americans are far more curious to know the latest NFL news,” not the dearly risks of global warming. “The discrepancy between these two search terms is so great that when compared to the NFL, searches for climate change fail.”

OK, so this contest is just another fantasy deep in the America’s collective unconscious. And “it would be highly unreasonable to expect search interest in climate change to outperform that of the NFL.” Still, that is deep in the social media “reality we’ve created in America. Even searches for Obama pale in comparison to the NFL over the last three months.” Fantasies beat reality in the American mind.

Further handicapping the UN-Climate Change Team is the new Fears Poll by Chapman University, updating last year’s Gallup Poll that ranked climate change No. 14, near the bottom among national problems worrying Americans. Worse, Chapman’s recent survey had government corruption as the No.1 fear of Americans. Global warming was not even in Main Street’s Top 20 fears.

No wonder the Vegas Hotline is projecting a lopsided NFL win over the Pope-UN Climate Team in this first-ever high-stakes fantasy football league Super Risk championship.

And no wonder the Vegas rumor mill just leaked this rumor: They have an anonymous, reliable hot tip from inside the Vatican. Pope Francis and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are joining forces and will soon announce that the UN-IPCC Team will withdraw from the fantasy league’s game versus the NFL to form their own new league, where they’ll play for the highest stakes, defending all seven billion in the race to save Planet Earth from the predicted “catastrophic ending.”

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